A Greatheart of the South, John T. Anderson, medical missionary

Front matter

JOHN T. ANDERSON

MEDICAL MISSIONARY

GORDON POTEAT

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Yang Tze River . . > : .11

II Early Indications of Character . 19

Chapter I: The Yang Tze River Chapter I

THE YANG TZE RIVER

After three long weeks on the blue sea, the Pacific liner dropped anchor in the swirling yellow flood of the Yang Tze River. In the darkness no hint of the shore line of China could be seen, but the travelers knew that they were at the end of their journey as the lights of the vessel revealed the muddy waters of that great river beneath the sides of the steamer. There was a thrill in this first contact with the land of their quest.

How truly this great river, seen first in the darkness, typifies that endless stream of life that is China, sweeping on through countless centuries, full of old world sorrows and old world joys. The river, rising far to the West in the snows of the Himalayas, brings with its swift deep current the blessings of fertility to all its banks, but also at times the bane of destroying floods. It bears the ships of commerce on its navigable waters for a thousand miles, the artery of trade to the heart of China; but, in its wilder moments, it crushes

ii boats with their freight of teas and silks in the teeth of the rapids in the Yang Tze Gorges. Thus also are the possibilities of good and evil in the teeming millions of the land of Sinim. Steadily down the files of time they have come, virile and strong, faithful to their past in a marvelous conservatism, with unlimited resources of man-power, to pour their wealth into the larger oceans of new world relationships. And yet the mouth of this stream of blessing is clogged by the silt of disease, of plagues and infection from fetid cities, by the filth of immorality in homes and of corruption in state, the deposit of low standards of decaying religions.

To conserve the power of the river for the benefits of commerce and agriculture comes the engineer. To purify the life of the people that they may have their part in the Kingdom which John saw as a holy city descending from God out of Heaven, comes the missionary. And of all the special types of missionaries, none serve larger ends than those who with their Bibles bring their lancets and their medicine cases. At first, prejudices against "foreign medicine" must be overcome and skill in healing demonstrated, but the day soon comes when the doors of the mission hospital are crowded with the maimed and halt, the diseased and unclean, and there is more to be done than the one or two doctors in charge can possibly accomplish.

There are only about four hundred and fifty medical missionaries among the four hundred million Chinese. Sometimes a single doctor stands alone amidst a great

THE YANG TZE RIVER IS

multitude with no other doctor to assist in major operations that must be performed. And because furloughs must be taken to rebuild worn-out strength, and because sometimes doctors die, perhaps of plague contracted from a lowly Chinese to whom the missionary physician has given himself in sacrificial service, hospitals have to be closed for a year and sometimes longer. Time goes on, and all too few of the young medical students in American schools seem to hear the call of the sick of China. There is little of financial compensation and much of sacrifice ; there are few great fees, but many dire needs. The appreciation of those to whom loving and skilled help is given is, after all, the greatest reward.

The Grand Canal touches the Yang Tze River near the city of Chinkiang. Following the canal northward for ten or fifteen miles, one comes in sight of the walls and the pagoda of the city of Yang Chow. (Yang here is the same character as the Yang of the river. Chow means district. ) Here the canal begins to twist and turn as a serpent until it passes by the walls of the city, for an evil spirit could enter the city along the course of a straight stream. The canal is crowded with ancient junks, but much of the traffic nowadays along this single outlet of Yang Chow is in steam launches which swarm with Chinese who pack them to their limits. Inside the city walls the streets are very narrow and the odors that rise from the congested population are seldom fragrant. Conditions of life from the modern standpoint are unsanitary and primitive. Chinese doctors of the old school have never been able to alleviate such conditions. At th$ best their services are inefficient palliatives. What can feeling the pulse in four or five different places and piercing the body with needles to release the evil spirits do to bring health and sanitation to such a city ?

Fifteen years or so ago, Dr. Philip Evans, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, and his wife, the daughter of one of the leading business men of Baltimore, entered Yang Chow as missionaries of Jesus Christ and apostles of modern medicine. Not long thereafter, they were joined by Dr. Adrian Taylor and his wife, who came from Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Taylor had made a brilliant record at the University of Virginia and had quite disgusted one of his professors by deciding to "waste" his talents on the "heathen Chinese," when he might do so well in America. Later still, Dr. Richard V. Taylor, Jr., with his wife, followed his brother to the hospital in Yang Chow. Calls came to Dr. Evans and Dr. Adrian Taylor to give themselves to training Chinese physicians in two different medical schools, and so shortly after Dr. R. V. Taylor was settled in Yang Chow, he found himself alone in charge of the men's and women's hospitals with an enlarging clinic on his hands. He was so occupied with this work that he did not consider it feasible to leave the hospital even during the hot summer months. Day in and day out he ministered to the crowds of sick who came for treatment, seeking always to heal their souls as well.

Back in America, there was a young physician serving out his interneship in a New York hospital. In

THE YANG TZE RIVER 15

his college days he had been touched by Dr. R. V. Taylor, when, familiarly known as Dick Taylor, he had been traveling for the Student Volunteer Movement. The inspiration of that contact with this enthusiastic secretary, who was soon to sail for China, lived on in this young college man through his own medical course and was one of the cords that drew him steadily toward the foreign field. Perhaps neither of them dreamed that they should one day be together in a medical mission in China, but in the fall of 19 17, Dr. John T. Anderson sailed up the Grand Canal and landed at the stone wharf of Yang Chow. He had come to help share in the heavy burdens which were bearing down the strong shoulders of the doctor who stood alone.

A short year passed by and the Red Cross Unit with the American Expedition in Siberia began to send appeals to missionary doctors in China to volunteer for service with the Unit. The call came to Yang Chow and though there were only two physicians to care for the host of patients in the hospital and outside, the two agreed together that one of them should go. The decision fell on Dr. Taylor and Dr. Anderson was left in charge of the hospital.

On the night of November the twelfth, 1918, Dr. Anderson left for Shanghai to attend a committee meeting of the mission. In crossing the Yang Tze River to take the train, the small sampan in which he was riding was run down in the darkness by a large river steamer and he was thrown into the river and drowned. The great relentless tide swept his body on in the darkness and it was never recovered. After all, what could one life do pitted against that stream? What could one missionary physician accomplish with that Augean task? Wasn't it hopeless in the beginning? Wasn't it waste in the end?

Chapter Ii: Early Indications Of Character Chapter II

EARLY INDICATIONS OF CHARACTER

A wide main street, very dusty or deeply mired according to the weather, lined with dwellings toward either extremity, and with stores at the center of the village, that, for the most part, was the quiet South Carolina town called Woodruff. In the section where the shops clustered was a large frame residence, the only home that faced the street in that locality. A magnificent magnolia, fifty feet high, stood in the front yard. The tree had been brought from Charleston at the close of the Civil War. The Andersons who lived in this home were relatives of Captain Woodruff, the founder of the town. W. A. Anderson, the father, came as a boy of nineteen to work for his great-uncle, the Captain. His own father had died when he was quite young, and the uncle had agreed to adopt him. With his grandfather and mother and brothers, Mr. Anderson worked nineteen years to pay off war debts, owing for slaves set free. Lawyers had advised the grandfather to repudiate the debts, for the creditors were well-to-do and were not pushing their claims, but he insisted on paying all. The mother taught school to help earn the money. The grandfather died before the debt was canceled, but the boys paid off the last dollar. It was Mr. Anderson's great ambition to go to college and he begged his uncle with tears to let him go, but it was impossible for his uncle, who had no son, to spare him from the work on the farm. Denied a college education himself, he cherished in his heart the purpose to send all his children, of whom there were eight, to college when they were grown. Six have already graduated.

Such the stock of which John Todd Anderson, the oldest son of William A. Anderson, was born, April 20, 1887. Limited in opportunity, it was rich in integrity and ambition. John early committed himself to Christ. He recalled years afterward his uncles speaking to him down at the barn, asking him whether he did not want to be a Christian. During a country "protracted meeting/' his father and he knelt alone, hard by the old church, and John gave himself to the Lord, joining the church at the age of twelve. He early knew the sweat of toil, and he loved to work and worked hard. At fourteen he planned and built a cotton house to protect the cotton picked in the fields before it was taken to the gin. The house is still standing, its door still swinging true. He knew how to plow and had a section of the farm as his own to cultivate. At fifteen he began to help dig artesian wells with a well-machine, and when he had finished high school he was sent to Georgia by his father to drill wells on his own account. Largely because of John's own energy and initiative, his father's home was the first in Woodruff to have water works and plumbing facilities. John dug the well, put up the

EARLY INDICATIONS OF CHARACTER 21

water tank, and put in the fixtures. Later neighbors, observing these conveniences, asked to be connected up with the tank and the town water system had its genesis in the Anderson back yard.

In the fall of 1905 John entered college at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. He came on to the campus carrying the suitcase of one of the upper classmen. His face bore a smile, the smile that became famous around the college, of one who had already learned the lesson — "Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles," and do it cheerfully. At the beginning of his second year he was called home to take up well-drilling again, to tide over financial difficulties in the family. Telegrams had come from Georgia saying :

Send your son John out here and he can get all the work and more than he can do.

His father called him on the long distance telephone :

"John, you know how I am pressed. You will be worth one thousand dollars to me next year in Georgia. Will you promise me to go and then return to Furman a year hence ?"

John replied:

"Father, I will do what you tell me."

His father said :

"If you are in doubt about being able to return to college later, stay where you are, but if you will go, pack your trunk." .

John went to Georgia and made the thousand dollars. It was characteristic of his relations with his parents.

His father has said that he never disobeyed him but once, and that time he came to him and acknowledged his fault saying:

"Father, I will never disobey you again." Like the boy Jesus, whose outlook was far wider than his parents', he was yet submissive unto them.

In succeeding summers he was engaged in well-drilling, making funds to carry him through school. The machine was driven along the country roads from town to town where contracts were secured for wells. He was his own engineer and repair man and business manager. Regular reports on the progress made in digging were sent to his father and itemized accounts. Some interesting sidelights on his character come out in letters written home from Georgia.

Mother was saying that she felt so sorry for me because I have to work so hard in the sun. Well, I am sorry that she cannot be in the same fix that I am and enjoy the sun and the good health that I am enjoying. I am going to take care of myself and am working only eleven hours a day.

In another letter he writes :

I am staying at the hotel here. The fare is very poor, but I can make out on anything. The weather has been hot, but I have not felt at all bad a single moment that I have been here. My hands and arms and face have been sore with blisters and peeling skin. It has not hurt me, though, and I am about tough. My work yesterday was to rise at four and work on the boiler until the negro helpers came to work. While they were at dinner I took the engine to pieces and filed the brasses.

EARLY INDICATIONS OF CHARACTER 23

In a letter to his father he gives as his motto :

Look on the bright side and work so hard that you cannot think of the other side of life.

As he was conscientious and industrious in his work, so was he faithful and devoted to the church. On Sundays he was regularly at the services and attended Sunday School if the place had one. He invariably comments on the sermon in his Sunday letters home and on the state of the religious life of the community. For instance :

I have spent a Sunday in another Georgia town about the size of the last one. I went to church this morning,

but did not hear of any Sunday School. Mr. E invited

me to dinner. They have a fine large house. They did not go to church. They are friendly people, but full of this world.

In a certain town where he went to drill a well, no home would take him in to board except the poorest couple in the place. There was only one wash pan in the house and no water bucket. Ablutions had to be performed at the well. As he remained in town at work, some of the other people came to know that he was of good family and asked him to move over to another place. He refused, however, to leave the poor folk who first took him in.

One rainy day when they had stopped work, a man of the town noticed John and his helpers standing in the shelter of some freight cars. It was damp and chilly, and one of the men drew out a flask of whiskey for a drop of cheer. When it came out of his pocket, the townsman saw John speak to the fellow, but could not hear the words. In a moment the flask was returned to the pocket and not a drop was touched by any of them.

His experiences in Georgia were making their contribution in training and development for the career that lay ahead. Already there were indications of those traits which made his friends later regard him as the most Christ-like man they knew.

"In my reading to-day I came across the following which I memorized/' he writes in a letter from a town in Georgia.

My Prayer

In my home life may I be made a blessing;

A tender comfort when days are full of pain;

Always thinking of others before myself.

And in my daily calling may I work not for the wages I

may receive, But so as to please Jesus, my Master. In my inner life I desire to be kept pure and holy. O Holy and Spotless One, be in me a crystal fountain of

purity.

Teach me what my talents are and help me to make the

two four and the five ten.

Chapter Iii: At Furman Chapter III

AT FURMAN

The following fall John was back in Furman again. The college belongs to that group of small colleges, definitely Christian in purpose, which has produced so much of the finest leadership in America. Its traditions are healthily and honestly religious. It is "a brotherhood for character building and a fellowship in the pursuit of knowledge/' Because of the moderate size of the student body there is a real community of interest and the students enter fully into the whole life of the institution. The daily chapel services are no perfunctory affair, nor is the athletic and social life less hearty than in larger institutions, and the close contact of student and professor affords special intellectual advantages.

John took his full share in all the life of the college. His cheery disposition and unselfish spirit made him one of the most popular men in school. Not particularly skillful in athletics though physically wellbuilt, he faithfully played his part on the "scrubs," and was an enthusiastic supporter of the athletic teams. He was no saint who thought himself too good to mix with other men. His ability to manage affairs laid him open to many calls for his services. If there was a college picnic or banquet or reception, he was sure to have the chief responsibility for the arrangements. He decorated the halls for public functions; he was in the kitchen when refreshments were to be served. He was student manager of the college dormitory and dining-room, business manager of the college monthly and the year book, and held many other such offices in the various student organizations. As one of his fellow students has said:

"He was the servant of the student body while at Furman. He made opportunities to serve."

A fellow student fallen sick, it was John who nursed him, who went to the kitchen and prepared him palatable food. These things he loved rather than his books, and because there were so many things that called for his time outside of the class-room, he did not usually stand well in his classes. But there is no man who went through Furman in those years who stood higher in the estimation of the faculty. The President remarked many times :

"John Anderson has a genius for helpfulness/'

And one of the professors has written :

What John Anderson was at the end, he was at the beginning of my acquaintance with him. Throughout his student years in Furman, he ministered to the physical needs of fellow students. He was almost as much of a physician then as he was afterwards. And in all of these ministrations one felt that John Anderson was first a Christian, and second, a physician. He was one of the purest spirits I have ever known.

AT FURMAN 29

In this second year at college, Dr. W. W. Hamilton, at that time a pastor and later head of the Department of Evangelism of the Southern Baptist Convention, came to Greenville for a week of meetings in the church attended by most of the college students. In a midnight prayer-meeting which lasted until two o'clock in the morning, John made his full surrender to Christ and from that time on heart and soul were dedicated to the Master's service, looking toward the day when he would be a missionary. He became a man of one purpose. Everything he did subsequently was related to that "one thing I do. ,, Moreover, he did not postpone his missionary service until he was in China. The two things that were nearest his heart from that time forward were the college Young Men's Christian Association and the Student Volunteer Band. He became an officer in both organizations, and served with contagious enthusiasm and energy. Dr. George W. Truett came for an evangelistic campaign one year, and John prepared a list of the college men who were not Christians, and called some of his friends together for daily prayer that they might be saved. He also talked to many of them personally and arranged conferences for them with ministers and friends. He would take his place beside a timid, unsaved fellow student when the invitation was given and go with him to the front of the church. Always was he concerned that his friends should find the same high joy in the friendship of Christ that he himself knew.

Greenville is a cotton mill center. There are fourteen or fifteen large mills in the outskirts of the city. On a visit to the Union Bleachery Mill, John was so impressed with the religious needs of the mill village that he subsequently organized a Sunday School there and himself taught one of the classes. Six of the forty girls in his class were converted, and since that time, as an outgrowth of that Sunday School, a church has been organized. Besides this service he frequently visited the county jail with a deputation from the college Y. M. C. A., holding meetings there on Sunday afternoons, giving literature to the prisoners and conversing with them personally.

He once remarked of a man who had become a missionary :

"He did not do anything for missions while he was in school in America. I wonder how he can do any good on the foreign field. ,,

John set himself to his endeavors so that this should not be said of him. He had a prayer list of friends whom he sought to influence to volunteer for foreign missionary service. It would be difficult to calculate the number of those who had the opportunities for service in lands across the sea first brought to their attention by John Anderson, in a word or the gift of a pamphlet or a book. There are many who have borne testimony to this influence, as, for instance, a collegemate who went subsequently to South America as a missionary.

"John made a deeper impression upon me than any other young man that I ever met. I remember that while at Furman, he had me on his prayer list, asking

DR. ANDERSON IN HIS HOSPITAL UNIFORM

AT FURMAN 31

that God would send me to the foreign field. He arranged conferences for me with Student Volunteer Secretaries. I remember especially one he arranged with Dr. Truett which helped me greatly to surrender my life for foreign service."

John was a member of deputation teams which went from the Volunteer Band into the surrounding churches to speak on Africa or China or Japan or some phase of missionary enterprise. Though not an easy speaker he never failed to impress by his earnestness and enthusiasm. Most of all did his friendliness and sunny smile attract people to the cause he represented. As one said:

"He was not a very fine speaker, but he lived his religion more than he spoke it."

At the summer Student Conference of the Y. M. C. A. at Montreat, N. C, in 1908, John was one of a group of five who met together and laid plans for the organization of the Student Volunteers of the South Carolina colleges into- a State Volunteer Union, with the object of increasing the missionary interest of the college students, The first meeting of this Union was held in Columbia in the spring of 1909 with only a very few delegates in attendance. In the spring of 19 10, John was the principal factor in arranging for a meeting in Greenville. There were about forty delegates from the different colleges present and they had a good conference. John McEachern, now a missionary in Korea, was elected President for the ensuing year and John Anderson, Secretary and Treasurer, and together they perfected the organization and got the

Union on its feet. The next year the number of delegates was doubled and there was a strong group of missionary leaders present. The expenses of the organization had been advanced by the officers, but that was cleared up and since that time the Union has held regular annual meetings and exerted an increasingly important influence in the South Carolina colleges. What is now the regularly published Bulletin of the Union was once brought out by John Anderson monthly on a mimeograph and mailed by him to the members of the Union. It took a good deal of time in connection with his other college activities, but he never seemed to tire of doing this service. He had the help of a few others in this work, but his was the principal responsibility.

In the winter of 1909-10 he was chosen as one of three men to represent the college at the Quadrennial Student Volunteer Convention at Rochester, N. Y. There were nearly four thousand delegates from the colleges of Canada and the United States who met for five days in the great Convention Hall. In that throng there was no one who responded more wholeheartedly than John Anderson to the appeals of the representatives of the mission lands of the earth, the Chinese, the men of India, the Africans, the foreign missionaries and the secretaries of the mission boards. The white harvest fields spread out before his eyes by these speakers confirmed in him his purpose to help answer the prayers for more laborers by the offering of his own life. And when he had returned to the college again after those high days, for months he was

AT FURMAN S3

handing on to his fellow students and to church congregations near at hand, the visions and inspirations that came to him in the convention.

There is a revelation of what was behind this fullness of life and abandon of service, in one or two of his home letters at this time. A letter dated April 15, 19 10, contains the following:

I believe more and more in giving the first half hour of every day to God in prayer. If you do this you will have something to think on during the day. You will have God with you that day to help you battle with the evils of that day. At night you are tired and sleepy and do not remember anything you have read in your Bible. You need the protection of God through the night, but the devil does most of his work in your life through the day through men with whom you come in contact.

In another letter of the same year he wrote :

I believe more and more in prayer. You can get what you pray for if you are in earnest and if the request is best for you. Prayer is the greatest instrument in the hands of living men. It is the greatest lever there is. You cannot get a lever long enough or with the right purchase to turn the world over, but prayer is able to turn it over. The person who is the sincerest Christian is the man of prayer. He is the man who can go out alone and talk to God aloud, feeling that he is within a few feet of Him.

Again :

One's motto should be: Better to-day than yesterday. It is not expected that every one shall be a great man or a great woman, but it is expected that they shall be better to-day than yesterday.

To many of his fellow students, the most remarkable characteristic of John Anderson was his genuine humility. There was nothing of Uriah Heep in his self -depreciation and desire to keep himself in the background. He was invariably out of sight when the time came to give credit to those who had shared in some enterprise. If he was caught in the limelight, he would blush like a girl, and pass off any compliment with "Oh, shucks !" As a friend has remarked :

"I have never known a person who had a greater abhorrence of doing good to be seen of men."

Chapter Iv: Beginning The Study Of Medicine Chapter IV

History, languages, the classics, never seemed to interest John Anderson, and as a consequence his college record in these studies did not secure for him his Arts degree at Furman. But he became a new man when he entered the medical class at Wake Forest College, North Carolina 2 in the fall of 1 910. It was like the ball of the femur falling into its socket after a dislocation. Instead of dreading to pick up a book as before, now it was early and late to the study of anatomy, physiology, histology and the rest. Dissection was his fascination. The point of interest and attention having been touched, examination marks leaped away up. At times he led the class. He had found his groove at last.